by Susan Lewis
Nothing about their lives made sense any more, she was thinking as she returned to the kitchen and picked up her phone. What were they doing here in this wonderful apartment surrounded by expensive furniture and gadgets that weren’t their own? Where were they going to end up? How the hell was she going to sort out Grace’s wellbeing and somewhere to live, never mind what she owed now that the council tax arrears had soared to an amount she’d never be able to earn if she worked 24/7 for the rest of her life?
Scrolling through her photos, she eventually found a favourite one of Steve with his typical mischievous smile that seemed to say, I’ve been here all the time, what took you so long?
She tapped it to fill the screen and as her emotions engaged around the memories of how readily she’d depended on him, almost taking his strength for granted when times were hard, and how unflappable he’d always been, until the last, tears burned her eyes. ‘Are you really watching over us?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Was it you who stopped Grace from going last night and took her to the shed instead? I keep thinking that it was, but is that because I want to believe it, or because it’s real?’ She attempted a smile. ‘I can hear you telling me it doesn’t matter, because all that does is the fact that she’s safe. You’re right, of course.’
Taking the phone to one of the kitchen bar stools, she perched on it and looked at her husband’s smiling face again. ‘Martin, Martha, Andee, they’re wonderful people,’ she told him, ‘but you already know that, don’t you? It’s why you brought me here. I can see you fitting in really well with them, decorating this place, in and out of the office downstairs, going over colour palettes with Martin, teasing Martha … You never had a problem fitting in with anyone, and I didn’t think I did either, but I’m worried about being here. I could get really comfortable, actually we already are, but … I can’t keep taking from them like this. OK, I don’t have much choice right now because I don’t want to go back to where I was before they kind of took over things, but how am I ever going to repay them?’
His answer was so clear in her head that he might actually have spoken the words aloud. ‘Stop this inferiority nonsense, Angie, and let them help. And keep in mind that you never know what the future holds, I might have that elusive lottery win lined up for you next, then you can pay them back with knobs on.’
‘Mum?’
Angie started.
‘I thought I heard you talking to someone,’ Grace said, looking around in puzzlement.
‘Andee was here,’ Angie replied, discreetly pressing the home button on her phone to close down the screen. ‘Are you ready for something to eat?’
Grace yawned as she nodded. Tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed though she was, the short nap had already brought some colour back to her cheeks.
As Angie began to serve up, Grace said, ‘That was Martin who carried me back to Auntie Em’s last night, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ Angie confirmed.
‘Mm, it’s funny, but I keep thinking in my head that it was Dad.’
Angie smiled. ‘We both thought it was him for a moment,’ she admitted, ‘but no, it was Martin.’
Taking out plates and cutlery, Grace went into the sitting room to lay the table. ‘So what was he doing there?’ she asked when she came back.
Angie’s tone was light as she said, ‘I had a meal with him last night, so I was with him when Auntie Em rang to say no one could find you.’ Was it really only twenty-four hours ago? It felt like a lifetime.
Grace’s head tilted to one side with interest. ‘So was it like, a date?’ she asked.
‘No, it wasn’t a date.’
Still looking curious, Grace reached for her mother’s phone as it started to ring. ‘It’s him,’ she declared, and looked up with a teasing sort of smile.
Angie took the mobile and waved for Grace to disappear.
Grace stayed where she was. ‘Please tell him thank you from me for last night,’ she said, ‘and you probably ought to say the same, unless you didn’t enjoy the date.’
Slanting her a meaningful look, Angie said, ‘Hi, how are you?’
‘I think I’m the one who should be asking you that,’ he replied.
‘I’m fine, we both are, and we want to thank you for …’
‘Have you eaten?’ he interrupted.
‘Martha brought us a shepherd’s pie. Actually, where are you? Would you like to come and help us eat it?’
‘Well, as it happens, I’m downstairs finishing up in the office, and if you mean it …’
‘Of course I do. You’d be very welcome.’ Why wouldn’t Grace stop looking at her like that? She was supposed to be traumatized, for heaven’s sake; talk about a child’s resilience.
‘I’ll be right there,’ Martin told her.
As Angie rang off Grace said, ‘So not a date, huh?’ and taking out more cutlery and a plate she went to set the table for three.
‘Please don’t embarrass me when he gets here,’ Angie implored, going after her. ‘He’s a lovely man, he really is, but I promise you it’s not what you’re thinking. For one thing he’s still in love with his wife, for another he’s my boss, and for another I’m hardly in his league.’
‘Oh God, inferiority complex,’ Grace retorted in a near-echo of what Angie had imagined Steve saying only minutes ago.
‘And FYI,’ Grace continued, ‘you don’t know what I’m thinking.’
Wasn’t that the truth? ‘Grace, this isn’t a joke …’
‘I never said it was …’
‘… but if you’re going to turn it into one I’ll ask him not to come.’
‘Too late, he’s already here,’ and in spite of how tired she looked she took herself off to answer the door, leaving Angie to wonder how soon she could persuade her to go back to bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Almost three weeks had passed since the night of the juggernauts, as Angie often thought of it, and in that time Grace had settled back into school showing no signs – at least not yet – of the trauma she’d experienced. If anything she seemed brighter in her spirits than she had for a while, something Angie put down to her new job clearing tables and washing up on weekend mornings at the Seafront Café. If she wanted to help so badly then best to let her do it in plain sight, with Fliss watching over her.
They’d heard no more from the police since that dreadful night; like Andee had told her, it was as if, at least in the official world, it had never happened. Though Angie remained convinced that Roland Shalik had been in some way involved she was left to hope that some kind of net was closing in on him, and that when it did it would come so fast and so hard that it would shatter his world completely, the way he’d tried to shatter hers. It might not help her with her debt, or with somewhere to live, but it would please her greatly to know that he was being taken to a place where he could inflict no more harm on gullible and vulnerable young girls.
On the whole though, she didn’t spend much time thinking about him, it did her no good. She needed all the presence of mind and mettle she could summon to face up to the devastating reality of how much she actually owed. She’d thought it was around fifteen thousand pounds – an amount that had made her a nervous wreck – but apparently it had escalated to a staggering thirty thousand. It was the local authority’s efforts to collect the council tax that had caused the massive increase, so now she didn’t only owe two full years’ worth of tax payable immediately with interest, she’d also incurred a whole slew of other fees for searches and collection that made her head spin when the adviser, Rudi, had tried to explain them to her.
Words like trustees, insolvency practitioners, bailiffs, liquidators, estimates, creditors, had come at her like physical blows, every one of them dealt by a system she didn’t even begin to understand. The words she wasn’t hearing enough of but clung to desperately every time she did, were debt forgiveness and payment plan. Apparently it was possible for some arrears to be written off completely, while others could be paid over a lo
nger period of time than the original agreement. The adviser was working with the creditors to sort this out as best he could, but the council tax bill and all the ruinous fees that had been added to it, thanks to a bankruptcy petition, were a liability he’d so far failed to reduce in any way.
She’d admitted this to no one yet, not even Emma, and she’d made Rudi swear not to tell Martin. She couldn’t be sure whether this was because she was afraid he’d think she was asking for yet more help, or because he might offer it anyway and let her work out a repayment plan with him. Either way she simply wouldn’t be able to bear it. It was bad enough that she was still in his flat all these weeks after he’d offered it and he hadn’t asked for a penny in rent. Not that she had anything to offer; with her BtG income and benefits still being swallowed up by her overdraft and credit cards, she was left only with the wages Emma collected on her behalf each week and the cash Martha occasionally pressed into her hand.
She was beginning to understand now why people were driven to suicide over debt, for she was coming to realize just how brutally the system worked against them. It used to be credit cards and banks that ran people into trouble, the adviser had told her, but these days it was more often the local authority. There had been so many cuts to their funding that they’d become ruthless in their pursuance of outstanding bills, using every method possible to get the money, and making collection institutions rich off the back of it. Clamping down like this on people already suffering hardship made no sense to her, but she was in no position to fight it. All she could do was accept that suicide would never be an option for her, with Grace and Zac to think of – Emma too since she’d have to pick up the pieces. So one way or another, in spite of the night terrors and pleadings with God that went ignored, she was going to have to find a way of sorting this out.
One brighter light on the horizon was the fact that the council now had a place for her with three bedrooms, a shower room and a small garden. It was part of a terrace set back from a busy road only a mile from the Fairweather estate, and apparently it was in good repair. She hadn’t seen it yet because she’d only been told about it yesterday – apparently Martin had vetted two other possibles that had come up first and had told the housing department to go away and think again.
Such power that people in her position could only dream about.
However, if he thought this one was acceptable then she wasn’t only going to keep an open mind, she was going to make herself believe in it even before she got there.
She was also going to block all thoughts of Amy Cutler’s friends, the Cotters, moving into 14 Willow Close this afternoon.
What she needed to focus on, as she drove away from the retirement village heading back to town, was the phone call she’d just received from Emma. They’d been expecting to hear more from Ivan ever since he’d returned from Carlene Masters’ funeral and delivered the disappointing news that the nieces, not the church, had inherited the properties. No one had known until a few minutes ago what the nieces intended to do with their generous bequest.
Apparently they intended to sell.
Not only was this going to mean the end of Bridging the Gap, it would also make the residents homeless, unless she and Emma could find independent living arrangements for them before the houses went on the market.
‘They say we don’t have to rush,’ Emma had told her, ‘the nieces, who never went to visit their aunt once, but don’t get me started on that, are happy to wait a month before contacting an estate agent.’
‘A month?’ Angie repeated in shock. ‘And they think that gives us enough time? They have no idea, have they, and I don’t suppose they care.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they do, but at least Lennie and Alexei stand a chance of getting somewhere, and somehow I’ll sort out my guys too, I just don’t know what we’re going to do about Hamish.’
Even as Emma spoke, Angie’s head filled with worry. In spite of everything she was going through in her own life, she hadn’t once forgotten about Hamish and how it might affect him if Hill Lodge could no longer be his home. She’d even considered taking him to live with them if she was given a place big enough, but by the sound of it, the new house was only just going to fit the three of them.
The phone on her passenger seat rang and she clicked on saying, ‘Hi, I was just thinking about you.’ It wasn’t true, but it could have been, for she spent quite a lot of time thinking about Martin these days. Moreover, she was confident enough to tell him so in a jokey manner.
‘And there was me thinking about you,’ he countered. ‘Where are you?’
‘Just coming past the garden centre on Radley Corner. Is there somewhere you need me to go?’
‘I’d like you to come here, to the office. There’s something I need to discuss with you.’ He added quickly, ‘It’s nothing bad.’
Thankful for the last-minute reassurance, she said, ‘I should be there in about twenty minutes. I was going to see the house on the way, but I think I’ll wait until the children have finished school so they can come with me.’
‘Good call,’ he told her, and a moment later he was gone.
As she drove on she tried not to second-guess what it was about, for she’d only tie herself up in unnecessary knots, so she focused on Andee’s visit to the prison instead. The first one she’d arranged had been cancelled due to an ‘incident’ Sean Prince had been involved in, so she was going tomorrow and would report back to Angie as soon as she left.
‘Just don’t get your hopes too high,’ Andee had cautioned when they’d spoken earlier. ‘It’s possible Prince is going to give me the runaround just for the hell of it – it’s the kind of thing individuals like him do in order to get a visit – but if I think he might have information on where to find Liam I’ll give him five minutes with the benefit of the doubt.’
Andee was someone else who’d become a friend this past month – well, that might be overstating it, but they’d spent a couple more occasions since the first one, sharing a bottle of wine and chatting, mostly about their children.
She was as easy-going as Martin, and possessed a similar knack for making someone feel as though they mattered. To Angie’s mind, they seemed perfectly suited. However, she was coming to realize that Andee was as committed to her relationship with Graeme Ogilvy as she was to the decision she’d made a few years back to give up being a detective. It was still hard to think of her in that role, although there was no doubting her ties to Kesterly CID, most particularly to her old team headed by DCI Gould.
‘Hey,’ Martin said, looking up as Angie put her head round his office door. ‘Come in. I’ve got some news – not bad – but I think you’ll want to sit down for it.’
Unable to imagine what it might be Angie pulled out a chair and faced him across the clutter of architect’s drawings and supplier quotations filling up his desk. His expression wasn’t giving much away, but at least he’d said it wasn’t bad – twice – and she trusted him, so there wasn’t any reason for her heart to be thudding like it was.
He picked up a large buff envelope. ‘Everything I’m about to tell you is in here,’ he said, ‘but there’s a lot to take in, so I thought I’d give you the salient points before you read through it yourself.’
Confused, she took the envelope, glanced at it, then back to him.
‘As you probably know,’ he began, ‘Jerome, who’s been helping you with various legal issues, works for a firm that is headed by Helen Hall, the town’s leading criminal lawyer. She’s a good friend of Andee’s, and it was Andee’s idea that I should get her involved in this, so I contacted her a few weeks ago and what you have there, in that envelope, are the results of her team’s investigations. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything about it before, but to be honest I was acting on a hunch and if it hadn’t paid off it would have raised your hopes unnecessarily.’
Not entirely sure she was following this, Angie tilted her head, waiting for him to explain.
He smiled. ‘What y
ou have there,’ he said, pointing to the envelope, ‘amongst other things, is a copy of Hari Shalik’s will, and on page four you will see that he has named Steve as one of his beneficiaries.’
Angie went very still.
‘I’m going to say,’ Martin continued, ‘that this was Hari’s way of thanking Steve for everything he’d done for him, but that’s me putting my words on it. What’s not in question is that Hari wanted Steve to have 14 Willow Close, which means,’ his eyes started to twinkle, ‘that you, as Steve’s widow, are the legal owner of that property.’
Angie stared at him in shock.
He hadn’t finished. ‘You are also,’ he told her, ‘the owner of two adjacent semis on The Beeches, one of which is where your sister lives.’
Angie’s head started to spin, so fast she could hardly catch a thought to make sense of it. Her house, Emma’s, even Amy Cutler’s were hers? It was too much to take in. She was surely dreaming, and yet Martin’s expression was telling her she wasn’t – and if she wasn’t then it would mean that all this time when she’d been struggling to pay the rent, when she’d failed to meet it and Roland Shalik had enforced her eviction, he’d been cheating her of what was rightfully hers. She struggled to draw breath.
Martin said, ‘Unsurprisingly we’ve discovered that Roland Shalik’s lawyer is as corrupt as he is, so it’s lucky we explored this when we did or it could have got a whole lot more complicated.’
Angie turned round as Martha came in carrying a bottle of champagne and three glasses.
‘Congratulations, Mrs Property Mogul,’ she teased, setting it all down on a corner of Martin’s desk.
Angie started to speak, but hot, bewildered tears suddenly fell from her eyes. They wouldn’t lie to her, she knew that, not over something like this, nor would they have told her about it unless they were certain it was true. But she couldn’t take it in, couldn’t even begin to assimilate what it was going to mean …